A Liberal Warrior

Sir John Carrick AC KCMG said life is a ‘limitless adventure’. His own life, as a soldier, POW and Senator, is testimony to it. By James Mathias and Fred Pawle.

We were saddened today to learn of the passing overnight of one of the greatest Liberals to serve this nation, Sir John Carrick, aged 99. Sir John was a NSW senator from 1971 to 1987, and held a variety of ministries in the Fraser government (1975-1983), including education, which was his passion.

But he was equally revered as a prisoner-of-war survivor and one of the few remaining links to the Liberal Party's formative years. He was an inspiration to generations of successors.

Carrick was studying economics at Sydney University in 1940 when he enlisted in the Army. He graduated the next year and was posted to the 18th Anti-Tank Battery, which was sent to defend Timor from the Japanese in December 1941. The Australian forces were overrun two months later, and Carrick spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of the Japanese, enduring both the notorious Changi prison and forced labour on the Thai-Burma railway, including the notorious Hellfire Pass section.

In his biography, Carrick: Principles, Politics and Policy (by Graeme Starr, Connor Court, 2012), he reflected that his captors should not be burdened with the guilt of atrocities committed; they were under a totalitarian regime in which individuals counted for nothing. He described his years in cruel captivity as a "great and enduring learning experience".

These principles would guide him later in the Senate when, during one of his first sessions in the chamber, he exercised a conscious vote to support a Labor bill to abolish the death penalty. His adherence to the sanctity of human life made him a "complete opponent of capital punishment" and defender of the "spectrum of human life - indeed from foetal life to natural death".

Carrick began his association with the newly formed Liberal Party in 1946 as a research officer, and two years later became general secretary, a position he held for 23 years. He and NSW party president William Spooner were instrumental in encouraging the formation of party branches around the state. He later claimed that it was their "constant campaigning" and fruitful search for candidates that enabled the Menzies government to be so successful.

It was he and Menzies who in 1963 championed the policy of direct government assistance to independent schools. Menzies famously told a young Carrick during this time, "My job is to be distracted – your job is to focus on the long-term." Indeed he did. Government support for independent schools remains a cornerstone of our education system.

It was during this time that he became a lifelong friend and mentor to John Howard, who was 21 years his junior. Carrick supported Mr Howard's first, unsuccessful run for office in the 1967 election for the seat of Drummoyne. Mr Howard ran again in 1974 in the seat of Bennelong, and won, holding the seat until 2007.

 "John Carrick was my close friend and political mentor," Mr Howard said today. "He taught me more about politics than anyone else. Just two days ago I was privileged to spend an hour with him. We had an intense discussion about the current Australian political scene. His observations remained acute. I will miss him keenly."

In his forward to Carrick, Mr Howard said, "John drew many people to his orbit through a combination of forceful intellect and indefatigable commitment to the political cause of the Liberal Party."

Carrick helped devise a policy for government to provide funding for private schools, which Robert Menzies took to the 1963 election. Carrick's objective was also to "hasten the detachment of upwardly mobile Catholics from the ALP". In The Worldly Art of Politics (Federation Press, 2006), party historian Ian Hancock said this was a policy "where moral principle and political advantage were happily aligned".

Although reluctant to step into the limelight, Carrick was persuaded to run for the Senate in 1970, and was elected in 1971. A polite and private man, his early years were spent adapting to the roughness of political debate, especially after the election of the brash Whitlam government in 1972. But Carrick did not shirk his formidable responsibility when in 1975 the Whitlam team began to rack up debts it planned to pay off using unorthodox and unauthorised methods. As a senator obstructing the Loans Bill, Carrick was central to the Fraser opposition's stance against Whitlam's fiscal irresponsibility, and later took "full responsibility" for his role in the crisis that led to the sacking of the government.

When Fraser won government in December 1975, he promoted Carrick to Cabinet, and gave him a series of portfolios. Carrick's passion was education, and he was a reliable defender of education expenditure in the pursuit of knowledge and vocation to maximise each person's potential in what he called life's "limitless adventure". One of his Labor opponents in the Senate would later recall Carrick's "intellectual discipline" and describe him as a "very good minister". (For a more thorough biography, see Donald Boadie's Senate biography.)

Carrick was knighted in 1982, and retired from politics at the double dissolution election in 1987.

Other prominent Liberals were equally glowing in their tributes today. "We remember Sir John as a lion of the Liberal Party, a soldier and a statesman whose passion for education improved the lives of many Australians," said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. "Sir John Carrick became one of the most influential men this nation has known. His legacy will not be forgotten."

"He was a friend and mentor to at least two generations of leading NSW Liberals," said Tony Abbott. "He was a living link to the age of Menzies."